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2 Patience, Not a Virtue

2

Patience, Not a Virtue“I won't ask again.”

“You said that five minutes ago.”

“Do you not understand this situation, boy?”

“My situation is that I'm entitled to a phone call, but instead I'm in here talking to you.”

This had been going on for the past twenty minutes. The religious waiter at the diner had called 911, and Jonah had gotten carted away to the sorriest, most disorganized sheriff's department in America. He wasn't expecting due process. He wasn't sure that anybody in the station could even spell it.

The deputy sheriff, a man who would probably be less than insignificant had it not been for the gun and badge, had been, at least in his own eyes, bullying Jonah for information, but Jonah hadn't budged. Partly because he didn't appreciate the whole farce, and partly because if he told them what had actually happened, his next stop might be a padded cell.

The deputy ran impatient fingers across a weather-beaten brow. “You got a name, boy?”

“Wow.” Jonah didn't even try to hide his frustration. “This whole time you've been badgering me, and you never even bothered to get my name, Deputy—?”

Jonah looked at the i***t's badge, and then raised his eyes to his face in disbelief. “Your name is Deputy Dumbass?”

The deputy sneered. “It's Dümhass.”

“Well, it looks like—” began Jonah, but the man spoke over him.

“It's a misprint!” he snarled. “The engraver had bad vision!”

“Whatever, Deputy Dumbass,” muttered Jonah under his breath.

Deputy Dümhass took a leveling breath, and tried to control his temper. “In all my years of being a citizen of Coastal Shores, boy, and I've been here all my life—”

“Explains a lot,” murmured Jonah.

“—I have never seen such calamity,” finished Dümhass in a louder voice than Jonah's. “This here's a quiet, sweet-natured, God-fearing town, boy. I wouldn't expect a drifter like you—”

“I'm not a damn drifter!” snarled Jonah. “I'm a tourist!”

“You watch your mouth, boy!” snapped Dümhass. “I've put away tougher men than your disrespectful—”

“First of all, you don't know anything about me,” interrupted Jonah, whose opinion of the town went from the sky to the cellar in the past half hour, “and second of all, I've always been taught that in regards to respect, you have to give to get. You haven't given me any respect at all; you took the diner situation at face value. All this time that you've been flapping your gums about the sanctity of this town, you could have been asking for my version of what happened in the diner. You put the handcuffs on so tightly that I couldn't even feel my fuckin' fingers, and for almost half an hour, you've been trying—and failing, I might add—to frighten me. And, once again, you have not once asked me for my side of the story! So forgive me if I haven't shown you any respect. I'm only reciprocating what I've been getting from you.”

It wasn't in Jonah's nature to be this disrespectful; his grandmother had drilled good manners into him. But this pack of imbecilic townies had pissed him off. He'd been trying to help that woman and the other Tenths, and he got lured into a trap by India Drew.

But why the hell had that Tenth man pretended to be an Eleventh Percenter? Even stranger, why had he pretended to be a Deadfallen disciple?

But Jonah didn't need to expend too much energy on confusion at the moment. He was in this station being questioned (by the loosest definition, anyway) for a panic that he did not personally incite. And if there was something that was guaranteed to piss Jonah off, it was being accused of things he knew he hadn't done.

Dümhass sat in silence for several minutes. It was clear to Jonah that his words had the deputy seething. But he couldn't care less.

“You really enjoying sassing people, don't you?” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Well, I know just what to do with you. Let's see if an overnight stay, compliments of the beautiful state of North Carolina, will make you cooperate.”

At that very moment, there was a knock at the door. Dümhass' head snapped to it.

“What?” he snapped.

The man who'd been at the front desk opened the door rather timidly. Dümhass' angry face loosened somewhat at the sight of the other deputy's face.

“What is it, Hawkins?” he asked in a much more level tone.

“Sir,” said the younger deputy sheepishly, “we have a visitor. For him.”

He jerked his head at Jonah. Dümhass scoffed.

“This is not the Marriott, Hawkins,” he said in an aggravated tone. “Tell them to get out of here.”

“Um, I don't think that's gonna work, sir,” said Hawkins. “See—”

Someone else pushed themselves past Hawkins into the room, and both Jonah and Dümhass flinched.

It was a black man with wire-rimmed glasses, very focused eyes, and posture so erect that Jonah wondered whether or not he'd ever curved his spine in his life. He wasn't necessarily imposing, but there was still something about the man that made Jonah feel the need to be wary or something. It kind of felt like the feeling that people got when they got around a tax auditor, or a health inspector.

The meek little deputy had said that this guy was a visitor for Jonah. But Jonah hadn't ever laid eyes on the man in his life. Was this some new crap? Some new danger?

The movies were right. The strangest things did happen in the tiniest towns.

“Deputy—” the man looked at Dümhass' nameplate, slightly raised his eyebrows, but maintained his composure, “—I'm just going to call you Deputy. I hope that that's okay.”

“Who—?”

“My name is Toland Mathers,” said the man, who fluidly flashed a badge and pocketed it before anyone actually noticed it. “I am here to take this man, Jonah Rowe, into my custody.”

Dümhass' eyes shot up, and he rose from the seat. “Like heck you do!” he spat. “This—this Rowe man here was disturbing the peace at of this town's oldest establishments! And don't come in here with that above my pay grade horse pucky. I didn't even really see that badge; it wouldn't happen to be fake now, would it? Who are you even with, anyway?”

Mathers was neither impressed nor unnerved by Dümhass' tirade. “I'm part a department that doesn't take too kindly to gun-toting ma-and-pa law enforcement establishments who apprehend law-abiding citizens and deny them due process and access to legal counsel. And according to my information, you didn't even read Mr. Rowe his Miranda Rights.”

Dümhass looked dumbfounded. Mathers turned to Jonah.

“Did any of these things happen, Mr. Rowe?” he asked.

Jonah didn't know this man from Adam, but he liked him. Dümhass caught his eye, with a pleading look in his own. Jonah smiled at him assuredly, but then muttered, “Nope.”

Dümhass whimpered. Hawkins gawked at Mathers in disbelief.

“You didn't read him his rights, sir?” he asked.

“Shut up, Hawkins,” said Dümhass, who now looked as fearful as the younger deputy did earlier.

Mathers nodded in satisfaction. Both deputies stared at him in silent terror.

“This is the part where you leave me to question Rowe, and no longer hinder me from now until the time we leave,” he said to them.

Dümhass, though still rattled, looked as if he'd been force-fed something bitter. “Move along, Hawkins,” he grumbled, and the two of them left.

Mathers stared at the door for several seconds. Jonah stared at Mathers.

“What—?” he began, but Mathers waved a hand at him for silence. He shut his mouth, more confused than ever.

Several more seconds passed, and then a pleased look crossed Mather's face. He sat in the chair that Dümhass had just vacated, and stared at his watch.

“That took longer than it should have,” he muttered. “Nine whole minutes. I'm getting slow.”

Jonah frowned. “Um, what are you talking about?” he asked. “Why were you staring at the door? While we're at it, who are you? How do I know you?”

“You don't know me, Jonah,” said the man. “You just know of me.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Jonah, “but I can't say that I do. I'm grateful that you got Deputy Dumbass off my back, but I've never heard of a Toland Mathers.”

He snorted. “Toland Mathers isn't my name,” he told Jonah. “That was merely a pseudonym. My real name is Ovid Patience.”

Jonah's eyes widened. “Patience?” he repeated. “As in Mr. Decessio's friend? Networker?”

“The very same,” nodded Patience, who extended his hand. “Nice to officially meet you, Rowe.”

Jonah shook the extended hand, still rather dumbfounded. “Pleasure is mutual, but—why are you here? How did you know I needed help?”

“I'm a Networker, Jonah,” said Patience. “We've been heavily trained to detect the involvement of ethereal humans in Tenth Percent crimes.”

The earlier irritation rippled across Jonah's shock. “I didn't do anything.”

“Of course you didn't.” Patience didn't sound doubtful or disbelieving. “People see only what they want to see, and Tenths, bless them, do that more than anyone. Now before we proceed, please tell me what did happen in that diner.”

Full of gratitude that someone believed him, Jonah told Patience about the Tenth impostor with the makeup on his throat who played a part while India Drew perpetrated the whole thing from the parking lot. His frustration, which had been dulled momentarily after Patience's arrival, reared itself once more during the recounting of the story.

“And once they'd made up in their minds that I was the one in the wrong, they didn't pay any attention to anything else,” he concluded. “They didn't even notice it when the guy snuck out of the place, or the fact that a fully grown woman outside turned into a damned bird and flew off.”

Patience took a deep breath. “A Tenth Percenter was doing the bidding of a Deadfallen?”

Jonah noticed that it sounded more rhetorical than anything else. “Um…does that mean something that I don't know?”

“I fear that it does.” Patience rose, and invited Jonah to do the same. “But it's time to leave here.”

Jonah glanced at the door of the interrogation, puzzled. “Are you going to show that Networker badge again? Because I think Deputy Dumbass will pay more attention to it this time.”

“Networkers do not carry badges.” Patience's voice was full of distaste. “One shouldn't need to carry such a gimmicky device so as to denote their affiliation. This thing in my pocket was merely a prop to throw off this sheriff's department. But they will not be a bother to us.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Jonah, I am involved in Spectral Law,” Patience told him. “Taking the reins of an ethereal matter from Tenth authorities is my job. Besides that, these people have screwed up twice. First, they denied you your rights. Second, they tried to eavesdrop at the door.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep,” said Patience. “Why do you think that I stared at the door for a little while? But I'm not supposed to know what they were doing, of course.”

“I'm just saying,” said Jonah, who felt the need to be devil's advocate, “this is a police station—”

“Son, this is a joke.” Patience didn't laugh, but his eyes were full of mirth. “Mayberry, R.F.D. was more organized than this, and that was a T.V. show. Trust me, I've got this.”

Finally, Jonah believed him. If he'd been doing this for years and was that confident in his abilities, why should he worry? “Alright, sir. I'm ready to get back to Rome, anyway.”

“Ah.” Patience looked at Jonah, and some of the mirth left his eyes. “We're not going to the estate. I can't take you straight home just yet. We're going to the Decessio's house first.”

“Huh?” said Jonah, taken aback. “Why?”

“There are…things you need to know first,” said Patience evasively.

“What things?” Jonah's frustration was back. Surely, Terrence and Reena would have let him know if something was wrong, vacation or no. Was the reason that he couldn't go straight home the same reason that he'd detected something different in their voices when he'd spoken to them in recent weeks?

Patience scratched his brow. “We won't talk about it here,” he said finally, “not in this place. But the thing that you need to know is that while you've been on your Jonathan-ordered sabbatical, the—world changed. Our world changed. Creyton returning from the grave screwed up a lot of things, for a lot of people.”